I heard this child of "Afric's golden sands" singing a song to soothe her soul among the dinner-deeds that she was enacting. Then I thought me of the earth lying in the hollow of God's hand, and in some way I wished that I might get in-between the earth and the Holding Hand, and a wisp of the sweet hymn, "Nearer to Thee, my God," floated out from my heart's voice, almost with music in it. And the wishing words melted into an air of prayer. I felt the mighty Hand around me. I put myself fearlessly into the loving depths thereof, engraved with lines of life, and slept securely there. Did the divine fingers draw me a little more closely, and press the lines engraven on the Hand into my soul, and leave an impression of dreams there? I felt myself going swiftly on and up through a skyey gradient, and the soft, balmy air, displaced by my passing through, fell back into its own place with pearly music. I wanted to open my eyes and see where I was going; but I could not. I was passive in action, active in thought only. Then, the music growing fainter and fainter as the atmosphere became more celestially rarefied, I felt the supporting Hand going away from me. One after another the fingers loosened their hold, and yet I did not feel that I was falling. It was gone, and I floated on. With its absence came the wish for action. My eyes were unloosed, and I looked up. Far above me I saw the Hand that had brought me up hither. It had gone on before, and was waiting my coming. I made an effort to reach it.
A voice came; and clouds, rosy, ambient, such as angels hang around the pavilion of the sun, were unfolding their glory-woven webs and weaving me in. "It is good to be here," I whispered to my spirit's inmost sense of hearing; and the voice that I heard spake these words unto me:—
"You have been brought up hither to learn your mission upon the earth to which you go."
Old, prophetic, syllabic sounds, lisped in the place whence I had come, were given unto me, and I answered,—
"Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth!"
Then a rushing wind of sound filled my ears, and I saw the flashing of a wing of angel in among the cumulosity of clouds, and it made an opening into an ethereous region beyond. An oval, azurous picture was before me, set in this rolling, surging frame of ambient gold and silver glory.
"It is not for me to see in there," I thought; and I shut my eyes.
The voice that I had heard before spake once more:—
"Learn what thy God would have thee to do. Look up!"
Obeying the mighty behest, I beheld, and an ovaline picture, painted in the artistry of heaven, let down from the crystalline walls, that I might not see, and held fast by a cord of gold, safe in an angel's keeping, God had sent for me to look upon.